It’s also important to note that June 2016 was when numbers started to take a nosedive, so comparing June 2017 to June 2016 will be very important to knowing if the Restaurant sector has signs of bottoming or not. We believe that if food inflation can spike for grocery stores, price sensitive consumers will see more value in restaurants again. As of right now, the value is in the steep discounts at grocery stores for those type of consumers.

What we continue to preach here is that the current (and future) winners not only have a good/unique/fun experience, but, particularly for independent restaurants and delivery-based restaurants, they have branded themselves online successfully, all by themselves. This is a necessary skill now, it’s no longer an option. Branding yourself online through your own efforts will continue to drive success for the few independents that can do it (since there is significant decline in their survival rate at the moment) instead of allowing Yelp and other online sites to control your brand, which usually spells doom. Yelp’s recent earnings release is showing that more and more restaurants are finally realizing they are doing more harm than good with playing nice with Yelp. Learn how and why you should be putting in effort to beat Yelp at their own game if you want to succeed.